Old Strathcona market strives for authenticity

Program traces product origins to ensure sellers are producing their own stock

What you see is what you get at the Old Strathcona Farmers Market as it becomes the first of its kind in Alberta to verify every vendor selling goods

Third-party auditors have been travelling to the more than 100 farms, homes and workspaces of vendors to ensure that what’s sold at the market is “authentic to the seller.”

“Recently there has been an emergence in non-local non-authentic products in the market and we wanted to make sure our customers are getting only the most authentic products,” said Donna Lohstraeter, CEO of the Old Strathcona Farmers Market (OSFM).

In 2017, farmers markets in Ontario faced scrutiny after vendors were caught misleading buyers about where their food was coming from.

As of Saturday’s market, 104 of OSFM’s 157 vendors were verified. Lohstraeter hopes to have the remaining vendors verified this summer. So far the market has found no one trying to mislabel or sell inauthentic goods.

“It’s reassuring right, I don’t want to feel like someone is pulling one over on me,” said Judy Salpeter as she shopped at the market on Saturday. “I wasn’t concerned about that coming here today to be honest. But (verification) can’t be a bad thing.”

During the verification process the OSFM looks to ensure vendors have appropriate capacity and sufficient supply of materials to produce what they’re selling and that each product is accurately labelled to show the origin of the product.

Verified vendors receive a wooden plaque to show customers that their stock is authentic. On Saturday a number of vendors already had their plaques on display.

“I, as a vendor, get asked all the time, ‘Do I make it? Is it mine?’ I always tell them I’m the farmer and this will testify to that as well,” said Sheila Hamilton, president of the Old Strathcona Farmers Market’s board of directors and a verified vendor with Sunworks Farms.

The farmers market received an $80,000 grant from provincial and federal agriculture partners to implement the verification process. As part of the grant requirements OSFM will now work with the Alberta Farmers’ Market Association to help with verification programs at other markets in the province.

The market takes an Albertafirst approach to their vendors, Lohstraeter said over 90 per cent of vendors come from the province.

Ian Kucerak Old Strathcona Farmers Market CEO Donna Lohstraeter, left, and board of directors president Sheila Hamilton display wooden Verified For You plaques at the market on Saturday. The plaques assure customers that items sold by vendors are, in fact, produced by those vendors.